


in all the tender things

by rievu



Category: Hamlet - Shakespeare
Genre: Canonical Character Death, M/M, for all the gentleness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-23
Updated: 2019-04-23
Packaged: 2020-01-25 14:09:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18576070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rievu/pseuds/rievu
Summary: Hamlet tells Horatio that he loves him for his steadiness, for his integrity, for his loyalty. Horatio does not tell Hamlet that it is not only his character that keeps him faithful. It is his love that keeps him steady to Hamlet, that keeps him by Hamlet’s side no matter what comes to the stormy coasts of Denmark. He has called Hamlet things likesweet lord, sweet prince, my liegewith a sense of pride thrilling down his spine and something more soft and tender thrumming in his heart.// a chronicle of how horatio remembers hamlet in all the tender things





	in all the tender things

**Author's Note:**

> note: i've adapted some of shakespeare's original lines and dialogue to be more understandable and to connect more easily to my own personal writing style.

Hamlet tells Horatio that he loves him for his steadiness, for his integrity, for his loyalty. Horatio does not tell Hamlet that it is not only his character that keeps him faithful. It is his love that keeps him steady to Hamlet, that keeps him by Hamlet’s side no matter what comes to the stormy coasts of Denmark. He has called Hamlet things like _sweet lord, sweet prince, my liege_ with a sense of pride thrilling down his spine and something more soft and tender thrumming in his heart.

But Hamlet is caught up in another one of his throes of sheer words, and Horatio can do nothing but watch as the wit and intellect shine from Hamlet’s eyes as he pours out his praise for Horatio. And Horatio is not a fool; he will gladly admit that the praise goes straight to his head. Hamlet tells him in hushed tones, “Give me that man that is not passion’s slave, and I will wear him in my heart’s core. Ay, in my heart of _hearts_ as I do you.”

Horatio is grateful for these small things.

His gratitude lasts longer than Hamlet himself. For this, he is not grateful. For this, he curses the good name of the god that Hamlet once put so much faith by.

 

* * *

 

 Horatio remembers Hamlet best in the small moments.

For instance, he remembers how Hamlet thrived at Wittenberg.

There is a small nook in the library, secluded from what seems to be the rest of the world. Hamlet prefers this nook best and drags Horatio to it in the dim afternoons and the fading nights of autumn. Horatio knows that he should be studying for an exam the next day, but he allows Hamlet to tug him along, hand in hand, past the tall buildings of Wittenberg and towards the library.

Horatio remembers the exact outfit that Hamlet wore. A long cloak, flapping around his hose and his tunic. A belt at his waist, engraved with the crest of the royal family and a fitted bliaut. Horatio thinks that it suits Hamlet exceptionally well, but he remembers the exact moment that Hamlet tuts and settles his own cloak around Horatio’s shoulders. “Mustn’t catch a cold,” he chides. “My good man, do not underestimate the breezes that autumn brings. Remember that they are sisters of the bitter winter winds, and sisters are alike as sisters can be.”

Horatio flushes, but Hamlet turns back around and continues to drag him towards the library. Hamlet looks best like this: bright and alive among the legacies of those long ago. Hamlet already has a pile of books set upon the desk — tomes of old mystery and knowledge that Horatio has never read — and he turns to Horatio with a clever smile lacing his lips. He sweeps the parchment and the quills aside as he perches on the desk. With each tap of his heels against the wood of the desk, he says, “Horatio, did you know? The professor has agreed to my research proposal and will have new tomes sent from England and Norway for my express study!”

Horatio hides a smile. So this is what Hamlet drags him here to speak of. Of books and studies and the world that hides behind curtains of words and written texts from ages ago.

It is so typical of Hamlet that it makes the memory even fonder in Horatio’s mind. Here, Hamlet is not tainted with the grief that dogs after his footsteps in Denmark, in the palace after his father’s death, after Claudius tears the world apart and sews it back together with careless hands. In Horatio’s memory, Hamlet is still happy and joyous and lives in the passion that keeps life thrilling through his veins.

And in Horatio’s memory, Hamlet tugs him closer for a fond kiss on the forehead before he leaps off the desk and hurries through the shelves to tug more books towards him. A constant whirlwind, that man is. Horatio remembers brushing his fingertips over the place where Hamlet’s lips touched his skin, and Horatio remembers the sensation of Hamlet’s cloak still wrapped around his shoulders.

Horatio remembers these small things and treasures them. Not because Hamlet asked him to with his last, dying breath but because Horatio would do it gladly, asked or not.

 

* * *

 

Horatio is a man of duty and honor. His father and his mother taught him thus. Before that, his ancestors — his father of his father of his father, his mother of his mother of his mother — forged that same sense of duty with a careful touch. He may be of lower blood than his compatriots, but his honor is something keen and sharp that endures through anything.

Even war.

Blood laps up on the shores of Denmark, both Danish and Norwegian. Fear prickles around Horatio, but he stands steady against the rising tides and the waves of battle. His king is at war, and so must he. King Hamlet and his son both call this a victory meant to be. At night, when they share the same tent, Hamlet whispers, “The ambitious Norway will fall by my father’s hand. I know it will be thus, it _must_ be thus, Horatio. Do you see?”

Horatio does not tell Hamlet that Hamlet has a way with words that illuminates even the darkest conundrum. Although Hamlet gets lost in the eddies and swirls of his own ideas, the merest light from one explanation is enough for Horatio to see the general gist of it. Hamlet lights the path, and Horatio follows. Even to war. Horatio follows.

Old Fortinbras is not an easy foe to defeat. Horatio peers out past their tent flap at the dark, inscrutable night and wonders if the Norwegians also think thus. He has only met the young Fortinbras once by Hamlet’s side when they were children, but he wonders if all princes hold the same burning flames in their heart. He glances back at Hamlet who bends over his journal, scribbling out words and plans beyond what Horatio could ever dream of.

Hamlet looks up and arches an eyebrow. “Horatio, my good man, close the tent flap,” he complains. “The wind makes the pages of my journal hurry as though the Fates themselves were chasing after them. Moreover, I am cold, Horatio. The wind bites through to my bones.”

“Can you really call yourself a true Dane if you are bothered by such winds?” Horatio chuckles. He reaches over to tie the flap closed once more but says softly, “If you are cold, my sweet lord, I could think of ways to warm you up once more.”

The sound of Hamlet’s quill scratching along the parchment ceases, and Horatio pauses. Then, he hears Hamlet set down the journal and tug Horatio back with cold hands. “I would be interested in hearing more,” Hamlet murmurs. “We are on the cusp of another battle on the morrow, and yet, when you suggest such things, I am drawn like a firefly to the flame.”

“By your words, I would say that we are on the cusp of victory instead of another battle,” Horatio dares to say.

It wins him a laugh from Hamlet that Horatio can feel against his skin. A deep, throaty laugh that is true and genuine in all the right ways. Not a false one that Hamlet uses in court. “True, but do not mock me, dear Horatio” Hamlet says with a twinkle in his eye. “But watch as my Hyperion of a father fells that ambitious, foolhardy Norway in combat. I have faith both in him and the divine above to guide the edge of the blade in its rightful place.”

Horatio watches Hamlet and wonders how this prince of his manages to put so much faith into God and the strength of his emotions. Horatio abides by the laws of order and reason; he cannot imagine living as Hamlet does. But Hamlet gives him the hope that sends wings fluttering in his heart, in his mind. Hamlet makes Horatio believe in something better. And so, that night, Horatio presses kisses into all the right places, presses _hope_ as Hamlet speaks it, and is rewarded for it with Hamlet’s sweet song. And the next morning, Horatio awakes and lives through another day to see that Hamlet is, once again, right.

King Hamlet cuts down the king of Norway in vicious combat, and they return to their home with victory flickering and flashing boldly in their eyes. Hamlet throws his arm around Horatio as he drinks merrily, and Horatio keeps him steady. Horatio keeps Hamlet there.

 

* * *

 

Old Hamlet wears the same outfit that he wore in triumph when Horatio first glimpses him in death.

The ghostly spectre of the king hovers by the treeline, and the other guards cower behind Horatio. “Looks he not like the King?” Barnardo splutters. He clutches his pike with a white-knuckled grip. “Mark it, Horatio.”

Horatio does not move but continues to stare at it. “Most like,” he breathes out. “It harrows me with fear and wonder.”

“Speak to it, Horatio,” Marcellus urges.

And Horatio tries. He bows, he speaks, he tries his best, but nothing will sway the ghost.

“Your son,” Horatio finally whispers, careful and soft so that Marcellus and Barnardo do not hear. “Your son grieves for you, your Majesty.” The ghost pauses and looks back at Horatio. Horatio bends into a bow, deep and perfectly executed. “But your son is safe,” Horatio breathes out. “I will watch over him with as much care if not more than I did while breath still lived in your royal lungs, my king.”

The ghost nods at Horatio, and that is more than Horatio can ask for. With that final gesture, the ghost fades among the trees. Marcellus and Barnardo exchange looks before they immediately start squabbling over the meaning of it. Horatio turns his head to look at where the ghost once was, and he murmurs, “In what particular thought to work, I know not, but in the gross and scope of my opinion…” He glances back at Marcellus. “This bodes some strange occurrence to our state.”

“Good now, sit down and tell me, _he that knows,”_ Marcellus immediately complains. He gestures out to himself as well as the rest of the guards that are filed up along the boundaries, silent and distant. “Tell me why this same strict and most observant watch nightly toils. Why such daily cast of brazen cannons for war, why such constant tasks for shipwrights whose sore tasks does not divide the Sunday from the week, why such preparations that work us day and night without rest?”

Oh, he shouldn’t have to explain this. It should be obvious to even a fool, but Horatio sighs and folds his arms. “Now sir,” he begins. “Young Fortinbras of unimproved mettle, hot and full, has decided that that he shall recover from us, by strong hand, the lands old Hamlet took from old Norway.” Horatio arches an eyebrow and says, “And this, I take it, is the main motive of our preparations, the source of this watch, and the chief reason of this haste and rummage in the land.”

The ghost appears once more, and Horatio watches it carefully. Yes, it can be no other than old Hamlet wearing the same raiments that he once wore on that victorious battlefield. “We must tell Hamlet with haste,” he murmurs under his breath.

Once Marcellus and Barnardo finish their complaints and their theories, Horatio takes his leave of them. He knows where to go; Hamlet frequents the same places in the palace with unerring habit. But something unsettles him, deep in his heart, and he worries for Hamlet, both he that is dead and he that is alive.

 

* * *

 

Hamlet grieves once more after that wild night. Although Horatio does not hear it, he hears Hamlet speak painful words to his father that seem to tear themselves out from his throat rather than Hamlet being the one to speak them.

Horatio goes to Hamlet’s chambers that night. He knocks on the door with an erratic pattern that they’ve perfected during their days at Wittenberg. “Come in,” he hears, muffled through the door. So, Horatio carefully opens the door without a creak or a squeak and pads inside on silent steps.

Hamlet’s rooms at Elsinore are much larger than his single room at Wittenberg, and Hamlet appears terribly out of place compared to all the gilt and glory staining the walls in this chamber. Horatio thinks that Wittenberg with its dusty tomes, flickering flames in the ashy grate, and the dark, aged wood of the windowsill suits Hamlet far better than this place. It is too neat, too clean, too bare.

Hamlet sits on his bed, hands folded as if in prayer. Horatio pauses. He did not know he was interrupting something. Hamlet glances up at Horatio, and the tension on his face melts away to reveal only pure relief. “Horatio,” Hamlet sighs.

Horatio goes over to Hamlet’s side and dares to take a seat beside him. “I will stay if you will have me,” he murmurs. “I do not know what comfort I can offer, but I am here.”

“Truly?” Hamlet asks. When Horatio nods, Hamlet leans against Horatio’s shoulder. It is a familiar weight that presses against Horatio, and it is a familiar timbre that Hamlet speaks with next. One of grief and aching, mournful pain that Horatio recognizes from the days after Hamlet received notice of his father’s death while at Wittenberg. Hamlet sighs, “I do not know what to think, but to hear of such heinous crimes from the lips of my dead father… I am torn, Horatio, I am torn.”

Horatio has no words to speak — Hamlet was always better in that regard — but he reaches out to pull Hamlet into a soft embrace. Hamlet nestles into Horatio’s arms and whispers the secrets of his heart.

“There’s never been such a villain dwelling in all of Denmark,” Hamlet tells him.

Horatio tips Hamlet’s head up and quietly replies, “We do not need such a ghost to tell us a simple truth like this, my lord.”

“Why, right,” Hamlet murmurs. He runs a hand through Horatio’s hair and musses it all up. “You are in the right,” he repeats. “And with such desire and business, you are pointed in the right direction of logic. And for mine, I feel as though I am lacking in both faith and reason. Perhaps I should go pray.”

Horatio knows that Hamlet means no barb, no thorn, in his words. “These are but wild and whirling words, my lord,” Horatio says.

“I am sorry if they offend you, heartily,” Hamlet says, his fingers freezing in their motions.

Horatio shakes his head. “There’s no offense, my prince,” he tells Hamlet as honestly as he can. “Never in all my life.” He leans in to kiss Hamlet, gentle and soft, and he chases away all the cold and quiet breath from Hamlet’s lips. Hamlet responds in equal reciprocity if not more.

Horatio harbors all of it, all of Hamlet, and keeps it safe and sound. Opens up for Hamlet, lets touch soothe the aches of Hamlet’s heart or as much as he possibly can. This is the least he can do for Hamlet. When Hamlet asks him on his loyalty, Horatio bends his head, traces patterns down the curvature of Hamlet’s spine and the outline of his ribs, and lays one kiss above Hamlet’s heart as his answer.

“Always, my honored lord,” Horatio whispers, his lips still above Hamlet’s heart. “As I do live, my sweet prince.”

Hamlet exhales: a short, soft puff of breath.

It means more to Horatio.

 

* * *

 

Hamlet dances with Lady Luck and twirls from Fortune’s arms to Fate’s breast as he plays his game. If anything, Hamlet is incandescent with his fury and nascent rage, and he moves from idea to idea with a dogged kind of viciousness that startles even Horatio. Vulgar words lace his vocabulary far more than they did in their youth, and although some of his jibes are well-played, Horatio has to wonder if Hamlet goes too far. Regardless, he watches Hamlet with bated breath. He asks Hamlet only once, “My dear lord, do you not have any fear?”

“Let Fortune, that slattern, take her wills as she please,” Hamlet retorts. “I have naught in my mind save for my father’s last request. Let other men be subject to Lady Luck’s buffet and rewards, let others be pipes for Fortune’s finger to sound what stop she pleases.” He eyes Horatio carefully. “I thought you were not one for such fancies as these.”

“I am not, my lord,” Horatio says with a incline of his head. “I merely fear for you.”

Hamlet claps Horatio on his back. “As long as you do not let a single word fall about my craft of madness, then we shall be safe and sound,” Hamlet says with overflowing confidence. “We shall catch that incestuous villain mid-guilt and execute him. Only then will I rest easy.” He glances at Horatio which is just enough time for Horatio to glimpse a touch of vulnerable tenderness in Hamlet’s eyes. “I will rest easy with you by my side, my loyal friend. I should be lost without you,” Hamlet breathes.

Horatio shuts his eyes. This is a frequent tale with Hamlet, and he prizes these words, these glimpses, these tender, gentle moments the most. _His heart of hearts,_ he thinks. He keeps these moments to savor in his mind and to remind him of why he does so. He watches as Claudius flinches away from the play, watches the way the guilt shivers across his face, _watches_ in spite of Hamlet’s voice ringing out loud over the play. He watches to shelter the truth under his guidance, and he brings this truth to Hamlet like a treasure or a prized jewel.

But he knows that he brings a knife to Hamlet. Whether the knife will cut or help Hamlet, he does not yet know.

 

* * *

 

At night, Horatio finds himself wandering back to old memories. Once, they were young and ran about Elsinore with wild, raucous laughter spilling over from their happy souls. Once, they spent their nights in a cold, drafty room at Wittenberg with their limbs tangled around each other and sharing breaths in the cool shadows of the night. Now, Horatio is alone with only the memory of Hamlet’s ship sailing to far off England.

Horatio has not remained idle. He speaks with Ophelia often. She remains isolated in her room for her madness, and they bind her limbs down so that she does not hurt herself. Horatio unbinds her when they speak, and then, they trade details and memories about Hamlet.

Ophelia was never a fool, oh no, not ever. Madness only sharpened her acuity to a razor blade, indiscriminate of who it touched. All the words she kept unspoken in her mind now come up to the surface, heedless of who it harms. Such is the nature of her mind now exposed to the world. She sits in front of him now, weaving flowers together into a crown for him.

“Oh, bonny, bonny, bonny,” she hums. She glances up to study Horatio. “You loved him, moreso than me. I liked him, body and lean lines and oh, there was a song once. _By Gis and by Saint Charity, alack and fie for shame. Young men will do it if they come to it. By Cock, they are to blame. Quoth she, ‘Before you tumbled me, you promised me to wed.’”_ She leans in and asks in a dark, mischievous voice, “Tell me, dear daffodil boy, has he promised you the same?”

She tosses him a different yellow flower. A yellow carnation. “Here, for you,” she tells him. “Because I have no daffodils.” Horatio does not miss the meaning. Rejection and disappointment for a yellow carnation. Unrequited love for a daffodil. Ophelia cocks her head, and her unbound hair tumbles with the motion. “You have not answered my question,” she says with sharp eyes.

“No, he has not,” Horatio finally says. He picks up the yellow carnation and twirls in his hands. “We have done very much the same.”

“Ah, such shame, such shame,” Ophelia cackles. “Two peas in a pod, we are! Princes, princes, never satisfy anyone whether in bed or out. What are promises to royals? Hey non nonny, nonny, hey nonny!”

“Ophelia, you may be the wisest out of all of us yes,” Horatio sighs.

Ophelia shakes her head. “No, I was always like this,” she tells him with a secret smile. “No one ever bothered to look before, and when Hamlet did, he shuttered it out. Like a crow or a simple cock, he loves the sounds of his own voice whether it be sweet or not. But sun’s rays do shine even when the curtain falls ‘gainst the windowpane.”

Horatio considers her statement for a moment before he nods. “Correct,” he says. “As you oft tend to be.”

She giggles and starts humming another tune. She finishes her flower crown and passes it to Horatio. There are yellow carnations woven into it with dead leaves lacing around the edges. She’s also bent long, flexible newly-budded branches of pine as the main structural component of it. Ophelia taps the crown once and says, “You know what they mean. Prithee, tell me.”

Horatio bends his head over the crown and murmurs, “Yellow carnations for rejection, perhaps disappointment. Pine for pity, and dead leaves for…” He glances up and tries, “Grief? Sadness?”

Ophelia shakes her head and winks, “For death, of course! We must be literal at times, dear daffodil boy. Pray you, remember that.” She shakes her tangled hair back and sighs, “I would give you violets as well, but they all withered when my father died. Oh, days, days, how death turns the wheel and we become it!”

Horatio looks at the crown and tries to gather up his memories of Hamlet when he gazes at the flowers. The yellow looks uncommonly gay and cheerful among the deep green of the pine needles, but the brown of the dead leaves catches in his mind.

Death.

This does not bode well.

Ophelia hums a folk song under her breath. One about death. She seems to favor those now. She looks up and eyes Horatio. “Do you not like it?” she inquires. “All’s the pity for ‘tis the truth!” She leans in and cups her hand around her mouth as she whispers, “I shall be there soon too, dear daffodil boy! Perhaps I shall meet the promise-less prince at Death’s door as well. I know my father shall be there already to greet me. Heaven or Hell, Purgatory or something different, let be so! I shall only hope that there are flowers there when I pass.”

Horatio stares at Ophelia with wide eyes, and her expression sours. She waves him off and snaps, “Oh, do not be so! ‘Tis only death! To be or not to be, that is ‘oft the question. Flowers grow, flowers wilt. We are also so, and ‘tis the wheel that rolls onward. Crowflowers, nettles, daisies, long purples — oh, some maids call them ‘dead men’s fingers’ now — and coronets of flowers and weeds and rushes! A pretty death, certainly! Not many have the choice of it.”

“Can I not change your mind, Ophelia?” Horatio quietly asks.

Ophelia laughs, and it shakes her, chest to shoulders to bright eyes that reveal too little. She glances at him, and in that moment, she seems the most sane she’s ever been since Polonius’s death. “No,” she tells him with startling clarity. “I shall have the luxury of making my final choice. Since when have I had anything like a _choice,_ Horatio? No, no, I shall see the land of old on my own terms. Farewell.”

With that, she lapses into another song. Horatio does not see the lucidity in her eyes again. In fact, Horatio does not see Ophelia alive again after that. She dies as she described it to him: among crowflowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples in the weeping brook alongside Elsinore.

He has only the dying flower crown to remember her by now.

 

* * *

 

Horatio has never called himself much of a believer. When Hamlet turned to words of God and faith and the divine, Horatio relied on the tenets of logic to guide him out. But when Hamlet returns to him alive and hale through some sort of deus ex machina, Horatio sinks to his knees and thanks all the gods in the heavens above.

Pirates? A letter to England? It is a tale that could only have been dreamed of by the wildest mad man, but it is so. Horatio cares not; Hamlet is _alive._

That is largely why he does not protest as much as he normally would have when Hamlet drags him out to the cemetery. That is also why Horatio does not complain or stop Hamlet from trading words with the grave-digger. If Hamlet died on the open seas or to a pirate’s blade, then he would not be here to do so. Also, Horatio has always been weak to Hamlet’s disarming smiles, and Hamlet employs it judiciously to convince Horatio to follow.

Hamlet leans over the grave and speaks to the gravedigger, and his eyes veritably gleam when he trades wit for wit with the gravedigger. Horatio tracks the conversation as it ebbs and flows, and Hamlet chuckles as the gravedigger cleverly sidesteps almost all of Hamlet’s questions. But then, Hamlet picks up a skull, and the gravedigger tells him, “This same skull, sir, was, sir, Yorick’s skull. The King’s jester.”

Hamlet holds the skull with delicate hands, delicate touch, as he whispers, “Alas, poor Yorick…” He looks up at Horatio. “I knew him, Horatio.”

So did Horatio.

“Oh, a fellow of infinite jest,” Hamlet sighs. “Of most excellent fancy.”

Horatio reaches out to rub Hamlet’s shoulder in what he hopes to be a soothing manner, but he already sees the way Hamlet’s eyes light up with the fires of the words that he speaks. Hamlet speaks of Alexander, of Caesar, of great men who once walked the earth and returned to the earth as bone and dust. “Dead and turned to clay,” Hamlet says. His tone grows sharper as he snaps, “That might stop a hole to keep the wind away!”

Horatio quietly says, “But their memories last, my lord. They return to dust and earth and soil, but they live on in the hearts of men.”

 _As will you,_ he silently says to himself. Ophelia’s words ring out in his mind, and he hopes — hopelessly, he thinks — that Hamlet will survive. He carries Hamlet in his heart, but oh, he does not want it to come to that.

“But soft,” Hamlet suddenly says. “But soft awhile! Here comes the King, the Queen, the courtiers. Who is this they follow?” He sets down Yorick’s skull beside the gravedigger and misses the way the gravedigger smirks after Hamlet’s retreating back. Hamlet reaches out for Horatio’s hand instead, and Horatio ignores the way the dirt and grime from the old skull press against his own skin because it is _Hamlet’s_ hand.

They listen with bated breath, and finally, Hamlet cracks out, “What, the fair Ophelia?”

“Aye,” Horatio answers. A single syllable, a single answer, and it is enough to wreck Hamlet.

Horatio lets Hamlet slip out of his hands, watches him stumble towards Ophelia’s grave, looks on at the way Hamlet’s footsteps crush the scattered flowers over the ground. Violets, unwithered and fresh, litter the ground, and Horatio wonders if Ophelia would like this more. Faith and modesty.

Horatio fancies that he can hear Ophelia’s soft voice in his ear. “Violets,” the voice scoffs. “Violets, violets, violence morelike. Give me truth in white chrysanthemums, give me purple hyacinths for sorrow. Let Hamlet grasp pink larkspur for fickleness, let others clutch the blossoms of repentance. Let rosemary stain their skin for remembrance done well. _Oh bonny, bonny, bonny,_ the world does not know what it has before they lose it.”

Then, Hamlet plunges into Ophelia’s grave with Laertes, his voice rising high and loud over the sound of Ophelia in Horatio’s ears. Ophelia’s voice fades out until Horatio only hears her soft, tinkling laughs.

Horatio finally steps out, crushing the violet petals under his steps, and he watches Hamlet in the grave. He is the first to offer a hand to Hamlet to help him out. His is the first hand that Hamlet takes.

 

* * *

 

“Our indiscretion sometime serves us well when our deep plots do pale,” Hamlet tells Horatio in the bare, gilded rooms of the palace. Elsinore remains cold in Hamlet’s rooms, and Hamlet leaves barely a mark on it. The only thing that Horatio can glimpse that shows a touch of Hamlet’s character is Hamlet’s tunic and bliaut tossed carelessly on the floor beside Horatio’s own.

Hamlet grasps Horatio by his bare shoulders and says, “There is a divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will.”

His eyes are deep and dark and solemn, lit only by the flickering candle by Hamlet’s bedside. “That is most certain,” Horatio says as he looks into Hamlet’s eyes, searching for something more, something that will comfort him. He finds none.

Hamlet turns and leans back against Horatio’s bare chest, heedless of the sweat that beads over both of their skin from their exertions. Horatio cards his fingers through Hamlet’s hair as Hamlet tells him the wild story of his tale. Pirates and letters forged by Hamlet’s own hand.

The thing that sends chills down Horatio’s spine is when Hamlet tells him that he sent Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to their deaths. “So, Guildenstern and Rosencrantz go to it,” Horatio numbly says.

“Why, man, they did make love to this employment,” Hamlet complains. “They are not near my conscience.”

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern attended the same classes as them at Wittenberg. The same exams, the same library, the same set of laughter that they all shared in the large, vaulted halls. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern were fools, certainly, but fools loyal to the throne of Denmark no matter who sat upon it. Horatio was a different breed of loyalty, loyal only to one man and one man alone rather than a thoughtless, heartless object like a throne or a crown. But they were all still friends. Precious, compassionate friends with the best of intentions, however misleading they might be.

“Why, what a king is this,” Horatio breathes out, aghast. His words are barely audible, barely formed with his tongue, and Hamlet does not hear it.

Horatio helps dress Hamlet when they are done. He ties the knots down Hamlet’s back, tracing the lines of his spine and the outline of his bones underneath Hamlet’s skin. He does not speak anymore to Hamlet, still shaken by Hamlet’s easy passing of their friends’ deaths.

Hamlet notices. “Have I done you wrong?” he asks.

“No, my lord,” Horatio chokes out.

Hamlet pauses and turns. He eases Horatio’s touch from his skin and holds his hands close. “No, I have done wrong by your eyes no matter what it might be,” he says. Hamlet searches Horatio’s face and says, “Come now, do tell.”

“You have shot your arrow through quill and through parchment and hurt our brothers,” Horatio finally gets out. “They were not mad, simply loyal to nothing but the throne rather than the king who sits upon it, whether that be you or Claudius or our old king.”

Hamlet’s expression sobers and chills. “Does it not, think thee, stand me now upon,” Hamlet sputters. “Am I not justified in throwing out a canker of our nature? Does it seem wrong for me to dispose of such fanged adders?”

“No, my lord,” Horatio says painfully. “And if they thought to hurt you truly, then my sword would be the first through their hearts. I simply mourn the loss of such friends.”

“Ay, you of soft heart, good Horatio,” Hamlet says slowly. He caresses Horatio’s cheek and thumbs over Horatio’s cheekbone. “Those that are soft of heart mourn easily, but a man’s life is easily put out by a single strike, a single nick. Forgive me, good Horatio, but I did what needed to be done.”

“As a king would do,” Horatio sighs.

Hamlet looks at him, and a faint attempt at a disarming smile flickers across his face. “Will you forgive me then?” he asks.

Horatio cups Hamlet’s face and says softly, “You have my heart with you always, my sweet prince.”

 

* * *

 

Now is the time that Horatio feels like all of the small moments are gathering like stormclouds in the near distance. Now is the time that Horatio feels desperate, the time when he hears Ophelia’s laughter ringing in his ears, the time when he sees the evil and the villainy lacing over Claudius’s countenance just like it did during the play.

They say that a man sees his entire life flash by him when he dies.

Horatio watches Hamlet speak with Laertes and thinks that his own life as well as Hamlet’s flicker by far too fast. Premonition aches in his bones, and that is what pushes him to reach out for Hamlet.

“You will lose, my lord,” he says in a hushed whisper. His voice cracks on Hamlet’s title, and he looks at Hamlet with an pained gaze.

Hamlet’s countenance is cheerful and hopeful. The most that Horatio has ever seen it within the past week alone. “I do not think so,” he says. “Since Laertes went into France, I have been in continual practice. I shall win at the odds.” Hamlet pauses. A peculiar look crosses over his face. “But I do have a sinking feeling in my heart,” he confides. “But it is no matter.”

“Wait, my lord—” Horatio hurries to say.

Hamlet places a finger on Horatio’s lips and laughs mirthlessly, “I know I am being foolish, but I have such a kind of vague migivings about it.”

“If your mind dislikes something, obey it,” Horatio urges. “I will forestall them hither and say you are not feeling well.”

“Not a whit,” Hamlet says, pressing even harder against Horatio’s lip. “We defy augury. There is a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, ‘tis not to come. If it be not to come, it will be now. THe readiness is all. Since no man knows anything about what he leaves behind, then what does it mean to leave early? Let it be.”

With that, Hamlet leaves Horatio and takes up his blade.

Horatio stands there, frozen with a kind of fear, and watches Hamlet duel. He also watches what seems like their entire lives flick by in his mind’s eye. He clutches all of their small moments, all of their precious kisses and touches and memories, in his hands.

That is what keeps him standing when Hamlet gets nicked by the poisoned blade, when Hamlet stabs Laertes, when the queen falls over dead, and when Hamlet plunges the poisoned sword into Claudius’s heart and pours poisoned wine into his open mouth.

And Horatio’s name is the first name that Hamlet calls out. Horatio cannot move; his fear roots him down. But the sound of his name on Hamlet’s dying lips thaw his frozen fear. He hurries over to Hamlet’s side and cradles him close to his chest. “I am dead, Horatio,” Hamlet murmurs.

“I am more an antique Roman than a Dane,” Horatio weeps. “Here, there’s yet some liquor left.”

He does not fear death. What is eternal damnation to a life without Hamlet? What kind of being dares to call himself God when He dares to allow such a tragedy like this?

“No, let go!” Hamlet says, wide-eyed. He shakes in his movements, but he still reaches out for the cup and takes it from Horatio’s clammy hands. “By heaven, I will not allow you to sacrifice yourself as such. O God, Horatio, what a wounded name. If you ever held me in your heart, if you ever loved me, then postpone the sweet relief of death awhile and stay in this harsh world long enough to tell my story.”

“You ask too much of me, my sweet prince,” Horatio gasps out.

Hamlet struggles to paste on a smile, and it pains him to do. But he does. A facsimile of that disarming smile that so enchanted Horatio in their younger days. It cracks the dry, chapped skin of Hamlet’s lips, but Hamlet beckons to Horatio. “Remember me, good Horatio,” he murmurs. “Remember me in all the ways that you loved me.”

“Always,” Horatio whispers. He watches as the life drains out of Hamlet’s eyes, and he closes Hamlet’s eyes with the gentlest touch he can muster up. “Now cracks a noble heart,” he breathes out. “Good night, sweet prince, and may flights of angels sing you to your sleep.”

 

* * *

 

Hamlet tells Horatio that he loves him. No, Hamlet has told him for now, Horatio’s sweet prince is dead and gone. No other sweet prince takes his place.

Prince Fortinbras offers him a place at the royal court, and Horatio only accepts out out of a sense of responsibility to his Hamlet. He is no Rosencrantz, no Guildenstern, that holds ties to thrones and crowns and gold. Fortinbras does not understand his grief. Fortinbras only plies Horatio with meaningless objects.

Horatio remembers Hamlet best in the small moments, and this is how he tells Hamlet’s story. He does not speak of mad princes or grief or poison or ghosts. Instead, he tells others about the way Hamlet read books voraciously, how he carefully collected words and knowledge from the ages in the repository of his mind. He tells others about how Hamlet spent his days with the lower classes — from gravediggers to actors to sailors to pirates — and how Hamlet thrived in compassion, in kindness, in emotion strong and hale.

Horatio still calls him things like _sweet lord, sweet prince, my liege_ with pride, but there is something bittersweet shot through the core of it. He keeps Hamlet in his heart of hearts as Hamlet once did for him.

He brings flowers to Hamlet’s and Ophelia’s graves. He lays down love and faithfulness and loyalty on Hamlet’s grave. He lays down remembrance and delight and caprice on Ophelia’s grave. And for himself, Horatio carries around daffodils.

And Horatio remembers.

**Author's Note:**

> i genuinely have no good reason for this other than an excited friend yelling about hamlet to me and an excited english professor


End file.
